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“You try to be greedy when others are fearful.

And you try to be fearful when others are greedy.”

Warren Buffett

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Well. I have been involved in several “stop spending money on those things because it is a waste of money” and “stop parsing out money in nickels & dimes and spend some hundred dollar bills for gods sake” business discussions throughout my career.

Suffice it to say, one of the most challenging aspects of being in business is managing money and how & when you spend your money.

That said. This discussion rears its ugliest head when … uh oh … you can see you are running out of money.

Let me be clear. Businesses rarely actually run out of money completely. More often than not it is “I don’t have enough money to spend after “x” date.”

This is called ‘spending over time’ budgeting.

This is called ‘wrong way to budget.’

Budgeting should always be based on ‘spend money to make money’ running parallel to the unfortunate business truth  that “you actually have to spend money to make money.”

** note: when I say spend money to make money I am not just referring to direct marketing or simple ’cause & effect’ advertising, but rather even if your objective is brand awareness your ultimate objective is to sell shit, i.e., having everyone know you and not buy anything is a non-business model.

I am tempted to refer to my ‘no formula’ post here because I believe every business has an edge just as they <assuming it is actually a good idea> always have an opportunity or opportunities. Using formulas when budgeting expenditures typically does not translate to edges, maximizing the edge nor offer real solutions to drive & create business. Formulas tend to say what has worked in the past which doesn’t often offer real solutions when discussing ‘we are going to run out of money.’

Suffice it to say that when budgets get limited <or you can see a zero balance on the horizon> and when a business comes to grips with the fact it is going to run out of money there are some hard choices to make.

The easy choice? Stretch it out and hope <the business is maintained or some additional funds come your way>. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out hoping is never a good strategy.

The difficult choice? How do I spend it now <or within a specific window of time> to drive up awareness/sales/connections so that I make an impact.

While it sounds flippant to say you have to spend money to make money and it is even more difficult to explain “there is something worse than not having any more money to spend.”

Uhm. What is worse?

Spending the money you did have … poorly.

There may be nothing worse in business than wasting money. And I don’t mean on frivolous expenditures <which is wasteful & stupid> or on ‘legacy programs’ <which is usually wasteful or at minimum ‘less than efficient’>, but actual well intended planning and wasting the money in doing so.

That said. The most common poor budgeting strategy is time based.

“If I don’t budget wisely I will use up my money by <insert some date>.”

Well. That is actually “how can I spread my money out for as long as I can” budgeting. I don’t have enough time to list how many things are wrong, and will go wrong, spending your money this way.

Basically you run the risk of spreading yourself so thin you don’t make any impact which defeats the purpose of spending money.

The purpose of spending money in business? <just as a reminder>

To make money.

But, remember, you have to pull the trigger on spending – having money does you no good if you do not actually spend it. A business should demand money spent to show how it creates money <some high falutin’ marketing experts will toss around “ROI” here>.

In startups it is to receive additional funding.

In some businesses it is that your budget is based on % of sales.

In other businesses it is simply that the business has some financial objective <sales, profit, widgets, etc.> and you are spending to meet and/or exceed it.

And while everyone in business knows this, for some reason, time takes on an extraordinarily high importance in planning. It becomes “I have 12 months to use this money” rather than “how do I spend the money to make the most money.”

Yes.

Sometimes those things coincide.

But more often than not, under the scrutiny of truth, they do not.

I got very lucky early in my career in that I was mentored and worked with some excellent ‘difficult money decision’ business people.

For example. An early difficult money decision.

It was a national brand with a long purchase cycle product <think maybe once every two years for the bulk of their purchasers>and a pretty high seasonal purchase skew where a high % of sales occurred in a three month period and a budget that didn’t support an annual national effort.

The senior brand manager decided to split the country into thirds and only provide significant support to one of the thirds each year <rolling through the nation over a three year period and then starting over>.

<note: there were some promotions and store support aspects and a couple of national cable events to maintain the other regional thirds while the other third’s effort was in place>

Yes. The initial presentation to senior management and sales was harrowing & painful. But we got research onboard and we had a sales projection team and we showed everyone how this would actually increase sales on an annual basis and how much it would net out for the company at the end of the three years and how it would provide a national foundation from which the following three years should see even higher growth projections <it would actually flatten out in years 7, 8 & 9>.

Without going into details the decisions were made to sacrifice inefficient ‘throwing money away spending’ for more impactful ‘spend to make money’ strategy & tactics. It was creative spending to create sales.

Not popular. It looked risky.

And it worked – better than even planned.

From that point on in my career I continued to propose & debate some fairly unpopular expenditure strategies because I was focused on spending money to make money.

Look.

I am not suggesting this is easy. Money & budget decisions can make or break a career. Shit. They can make or break a business.

You get judged on how a budget is spent. And you should. But the judge is often harsh and the verdict can be damning. Because of that judgement, money, and the judgement that comes along with it, can make even the most even keeled business person … well … lose sight of reality and enter into some imaginative world in which dollars get spread out in a way that appears to cover time and yet, in its worst form, does nothing over time or, in its least harmful form, does less than it could over time.

To be clear. A spending over time planning process takes incredible imagination.

To be clear. A spending money to make money is all about reality <sometimes harsh>.

Again.

I am not suggesting this is easy.

It is incredibly hard to have a start up business spend all their discretionary money in a two month period <to get results to point to>.

It is incredibly hard to have a business stop doing all the small efforts for 6 months and do one bigger effort in month 7 & 8.

It is incredibly hard to have a business “go dark” for any stretch of time.

Deciding when to spend and what to spend and face the fact that your plan means you will have used up your money <so there is nothing to use in case it doesn’t work> is incredibly hard.

That said.

I am a business guy.

And I like to increase business <to maintain it>.

And I have a nasty habit of wanting to do the right thing and not the popular thing or the thing that would ‘make the sales people happy’ or ‘look good to the board.’

I like to spend money to make money.

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“Sometimes I wonder whether I have any real intelligence or if I just have enough random bits of surface knowledge to bullshit my way through most things.”

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“Some conversations are not about what they’re about.”

Anne Carson

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Sometimes you give a crappy answer to a good question which makes you think of a non-crappy answer to the question. In this case it is about black box thinking. Marshal Kirkpatrick asked me about black box thinking in this Sprinklr podcast  and I hashed the answer. Time to clean it up.

Black boxes

Black box thinking (making sense of the black box output)

Framing concepts (to enable choicemaking)

 

Black blackboard in brick loft, close up

Black boxes are the increasing number of things that we do not really, or completely, understand and, yet, we are dependent upon them. Black boxes range from a television, smartphone to even ‘big data.’ In almost all cases we interact with a superficial surface intelligent delivery from the internal black box. In our gadgets how these things produce isn’t really that important (until it breaks down), but in a business context black boxes inform real decisions with real consequences.

Black box thinking is the increasing amount of thinking we need to do USING what black boxes give us. In society it is the things algorithms throw in our faces to read and how we think about it (or manage the algorithms to insure we maintain some perspective). In business it is the dashboards, excel spreadsheets, and, yes, algorithms, that are designed to tell us “what is important to know.”

Framing concepts is how we take ‘the important stuff we should know’ and make it tangible. Its most effective form is a concept – so that we can make decisions.  To do this, to make the black box tangible, you actually need to find cooperating data points.

** note: I would note that the highest value in anything occurs when finding the optimal mix of cooperating variables/people/ideas/data.

Cooperating data points is a term I made up. I made it up because I have seen far too many people pull random bits out of a black box, or some dashboard, and suggest these are the bits that we should use to inform our choice at hand. The random bits look good in isolation, but do not necessarily ‘cooperate’ with each other. Effective concepts do not rely on randomness, they rely on cooperation of knowledge, data and information.

** note: the bits inform, do not decide for us.

Using black boxes

I disagree with a portion of the business world (mostly older people in my generation) that we need to become skilled at understanding the black box. The argument is “if you do not understand how it works, how can you understand how to work the information it gives you.” Well. I don’t understand how to build software or algorithms or even a powerpoint presentation (well), but I understand the potential impact of all of them and assess their outputs with an eye toward, well, impact. I need to understand how the output relates to the outer contextual environment and assess whether they relate to the most important aspects of what I need to know to navigate the context. That said. The real issue is navigating certainty versus uncertainty or ‘black & white versus gray” rather than understanding the black box.

All black boxes have really done is teach us, or make us more aware, that we deal in a world of probabilities, not certainty or predictions. That true black & white choicemaking is a myth and that you seek shades of gray. You learn that your decisions are dabbling in the shades of gray and yet you have to be committed to the decision if you want any hope of progress. Gray resides in probabilities and the black box offers you the prompts to inform your probabilities assessment.

Here is where I bring in ‘out of the box.’ Crucial to effective black box thinking is to stop all the ‘out of the box’ thinking mumbo jumbo and embrace the fact anything you would have considered ‘out of the box’ actually resides inside the black box. Yeah. Inside the box resides all of the out of the box shit you are seeking. Go figure.

It is inside the box where it happens.

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“Chance favors the connected mind.”

Steven Johnson

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The black boxes

The future of business resides in the hands & minds of humans/people. Period. But it would be absurd to ignore that the hands & minds will be empowered by the black boxes and technology:

• Knowledge <or information of shit> is available to anyone with access to a computer
• There are an increasing amount of things which are ‘black boxes’ of inner workings <they work … but the majority of us have no clue how they work>which compress thinking & doing time
• Great decision making in today’s business world is more often defined by on how good you are at assessing what aspects should be accepted on ‘faith’ <the black box designated aspects> and what aspects need real knowledge & understanding
• It has never been possible to know everything … but in today’s world it is mind numbingly <and humbling so> obvious … and it has become more accepted to learn on the go

We are increasingly surrounded by ‘black boxes.’ These are complex constructs that we do not understand even if they are explained to us. We cannot comprehend the inner processes of a ‘black box’, but nonetheless we integrate their inputs and outputs into our decision-making.

The trick to black box thinking <the intangible, the uncertainty and vague ‘knowing’> is to make it more tangible, therefore, useful. This is ‘framing.’

Cooperating data

I talk about framing and the importance of effectively framing things all the time. I believe I should talk about ‘cooperating data/information’ more. Framing demands a skill in assembling ‘cooperating data.’ Just like building the foundation of any structure the cornerstones need to have some semblance of relationship. In crafting that cooperation you offer concepts people can assess and envision how it could impact the future (or some existing situation).

Discovering cooperating data is a skill, and art, and using cooperating data is an art, and skill.

Regardless. Black box thinking is the key to unlock business agility, adaptability, ability to meet emergent opportunities, well, the ability to be successful in a complex business environment.

How many times have we looked at consumer research for our brand which reflects price as the number one criterion in a purchase decision? And how many times have our sales group come back and say “it always comes down to the price”? (all sound familiar? gosh, its good thing Morton’s Salt never saw that research). Regardless, I would imagine if that were always true than marketing would have been simpler. It would have simply been the One P instead of the 4 P’s of Marketing.

Price is the easy answer for a consumer to answer with. It is rational and even from emotional standpoint everyone wants to feel like they got the best deal they could. But in reviewing business models across a variety of packaged goods, services and retail it is easy to see that while price may appear to be the most important factor it is only of the elements involved in the marketing mix (and, in fact, it appears to be de-prioritized versus other P’s, in the 4 and made up beyond). Therefore, positioning the brand, or product, in the minds of the consumer so it is differentiated, or distinct, from the competition, relevant to the target audience, and offer a compelling enough model to incent trial, repeat, and the ultimate desire, brand advocacy becomes the challenge. In other words, look beyond price to build value in the brand.

Of course, many things depend on the existing business model, the competitive landscape, and current core competencies, but an interesting way to consider the blend of the marketing mix to win big is as follows. After you have nailed down the traditional 4 P’s, look beyond at some additional P’s because they may actually lead to the prize P – premium value.

Everyone knows the 4 P’s of marketing – Product (or service) which includes packaging, Price (couponing, discount, value add, etc.), Place (Distribution) and Promotion (advertising, PR, etc).  The traditional business model suggests that you find the right mix of those four components to build your business.

However, the retail world (and the internet) is teaching us that possibly we should consider another 3 P’s to the mix – Physical Environment, Process, and People – just to make sure as we check the boxes of foundation thinking we do not miss anything in a world that has become increasingly transparent. I bring up ‘transparency’ because while many people have talked about changing the P’s or adding to the P’s they neglect a valid reason why they believe it should be done (and, no, “it’s a different world” doesn’t count as a valid reason). Transparency, mostly through the internet, has made it significantly more important to provide a more seamless brand message and positioning. To me, adding additional P’s is a means to that end. That doesn’t mean the traditional P’s are any less important, in fact, they may be even more important than they ever have been – it’s just that they may need to be supported in a more radically transparent unforgiving world.

Maybe it is no more complicated than isolating all components of the buying experience and trying manage the overall experience, but here is what I would consider round the 4 P’s out with:

The Physical Environment.

Multiple research studies reflect the longer you can keep someone talking about your brand or interacting with the shopping environment the more likely they will purchase something – and purchase more than what they planned on spending. Let’s call this “amount of time spent interacting with the brand.” The longer the engagement time the more dialogue you can have. The general layout and appearance of the business premises (and the website as the digital universe of a commerce environment) can play a significant role and effect how potential customers think about the purchase/brand experience. Important areas for consideration include:

– Color of surroundings and noise levels

– Physical space available for customer (comfort seating available, is the site easy to navigate and appealing, etc.)

– The senses in general (smell, sounds, sight, touch)

These environmental variables affect the overall senses, and perceptions of the consumer (as well as brand people – sale people, floor staff, etc). They provide indirect sales support building relationships with the overall experience. Two retail environments have been quite successful at building a physical environment – The Limited (they actually piped in smells in different parts of the store to accentuate the experience) and Starbucks. I believe it was The Limited that said, “A brand is a promise delivered in the store everyday.” In fact, with little or no advertising their brand is truly represented in their Physical Environment. Interestingly, an online-only retailer, Amazon, also does an excellent job with building a physical environment conducive to enhancing the overall experience. Their “people who bought this product also liked/bought” feature increases the positive experience as well as sales. It also seems restaurants tend to understand the importance of the physical environment experience.

Bottom line. Don’t overlook the fact a great experience not only increases “in the moment sales” but also increases frequency of interaction.

** note: many of the things highlighted in this section actually suggest ‘friction’, not ‘frictionless.’ This does not mean interacting with your product or service should be painful but some friction, or some slowing down in a process, permits you to educate and engage. In general, any time your ‘friction’ offers a ‘slow down to speed up’ benefit the brand will win.

The Process.

The general policies, procedures and activities of how business is conducted should be simple, consistent and reflect the brand essence/character/message. Why? Ultimately, the brand is at the mercy of the process experience. We often hear of buyer’s remorse. Part of the challenge of overcoming buyer’s remorse lies in managing this P. Once the purchaser has made the decision to buy the process should permit the actual purchase (as well as any ongoing questions/issues) to be as smooth and uncomplicated as possible. Complicated is bad friction in that it encourages people to think more about their decision negatively. Simple, but complex, is good friction in that it encourages people to think more about the wisdom of their purchase (this actually adds value). Supermarkets were one of the first to recognize this. Remember all those random items you would start noticing the closer you got to register in the old days? As people stood in line, they started reconsidering items they may have ‘impulse purchased’ and started eliminating those items from their baskets. The process was costing the supermarkets money (as well as the general dissatisfaction of waiting when the purchaser was ready to finish the experience). Enter self-check lines. This P may actually define the e-commerce world and UX & UI in that most Sellers have re-designed process to eliminate barriers and dissatisfaction points (banks are still struggling with this).

Once again, the process is relevant to the online and ‘brick & mortar’ world. In a consumer buying world anything that eases the amount of time to find what it is you want and make the actual purchase enhances the overall buying experience. Of course, it helps if the employees have the appropriate degree of authority to match their responsibility.

The People.

The people involved in the business must display a high degree of customer service and provide value in the experience – this includes sales, service and anyone who interacts with potentials purchasers. All employees should be keenly aware that it is the customer who pays their wages. Critical areas include:

• • • Attitude

    • Appearance

    • Degree of helpfulness (empowerment to act)

    • General Personal Effectiveness (task accomplishment)

    • Brand understanding (they are the embodiment of the brand in every interaction)    

This, people, may be even more important in a business-to-business (b2b) environment than even in a retail environment. While someone like the teller in a bank certainly influences the perceptions with regard to a brand, that teller is typically just one component in an overall brand experience with marketing, advertising and public relations. In b2b environment in many cases the sales people ARE the brand. What they say, how they say it and how they act create the overall perceptions of the brand in the target (or their consumers) minds.

Training helps build the “significantly above parity” aspect offered in people’s interactions.  In addition, brands should consider building process into hiring – aggressive vetting for not only on-the-floor personnel, but also the business owners/managers (even up to franchisee owner or distributor if relevant). It may sound like overkill but the more dependent your brand is upon the people who are the face of the brand the more important it is that you insure these people can reflect your brand personality & value. It is not that you are seeking clones, but it is probably important that Amazon books has someone who has some literacy skills answering questions rather than a “some dude whose idea of literature is comics.” Training can insure the ‘listening & responding’ relationship meets the user needs.

And once your people are trained and live, eat & breathe your brand essence, you have the opportunity to give them decision-making responsibilities and make the overall brand even stronger. Ritz Carlton is a perfect example. On their business cards it says “ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen.” And each employee has the right to refuse a customer who is not treating them as a lady or gentleman. In Ritz’s situation they realize that building a brand is a dialogue – not a monologue. It is the interaction that creates the dynamic which makes that particular brand so successful. Absolutely Ritz Carlton sets the standard for luxury service, but it is always within a brand character framework where the people recognize the people they serve have a commitment to the Ritz brand if they want to stay there.

Your people embody your brand – the company’s products and services. Their words and actions can often mean as much as how your product/service performs. Find the right people to represent your brand and train them well and your employees become ambassadors.  

Managing the P’s.

I believe there are basically five positions one can take in each of the 7 P categories I suggested. These five positions are illustrated using pricing, but each can certainly apply to the other 6 P’s as well.

1. 1. Significantly below the market. This is a low cost provider. Lowest price all the time. All other value points take a back seat.

   2. Just below the market average (10% below the market leader price) e.g. a Kohl’s.

   3. At parity.  About the same price as everyone else. e.g., Target, most supermarkets)

   4. Just above the market average (10% above the market leader price) e.g., Bloomingdale’s or Blue Cross Blue Shield)

   5. Significantly above market average e.g., Nordstrom, Ritz Carlton

In a nutshell, “at parity with the market” on some of the P’s is acceptable and certainly is a viable strategy. But it seems seeking situations to be “significantly above market average” on some of the P’s has to be an objective to ensure long term success unless you are low cost all the time. This “significantly above market average” provides the value-add that differentiates a brand/company/store in the marketplace. 

And the ‘rubber meets the road’ by insuring when building the 7 P strategy that we narrow our target toward those people who value this equation.  This transcends gender and age.  It is more about what people value.  In other words, the solution will never be right for everyone. It is about choice. Just as a brand should make choices with regard to a 7 P’s strategy, they should make choices about which audiences to focus building brand advocacy.

Just a note.

Promotion as the Problem P. 

Lastly, let talk about Promotion, the truly tricky P in the equation as one tries to build a brand success. It is the drug P – highly successful in gaining trial and highly addictive if not managed in maintaining user interaction (I hesitate to suggest promotion can ever truly build brand advocacy). In fact, if we look at behavioral research, time and time again different industries have shown that money (either by lower prices or cash rewards) only buys short term behavior. As soon as that drug is taken away people revert back to their more natural habitual behavior. Worse, all that money and energy spent on promotion actually steals away some of what a business, and brand, really desires – long term value.

** note: Binet/Fields, The Long & Short of It, is most likely the best thinking on this topic. All I ask is that you use their thinking, and research, as guidance for thinking and not a formula for action.

Now, I believe a brand needs to spend as much as a business model can afford on promotion with the intent to educate about something new (while always explaining the points where the brand is leader in that category). In fact, to the extent that a brand can investment spend to build the category, they should do so. There is so often a “need for speed to market”, or maybe better said, building critical mass in initial sales, and promotion can certainly play a significant role in doing so. Without trial a brand will die. And simply saying “we will not be a promotion brand” is silly as an all-encompassing statement. Do what you have to do today to insure there is a tomorrow. All we suggest is to plan what you want to be tomorrow and build that into whatever promotional activity you have to do now. 

Aligning the P’s.

Look. I realize that stretching the P’s beyond the traditional 4 may seem silly. But I go back to where I began – as the market becomes more transparent, the business needs to become more diligent.

I realize there is a lot here, but aligning the P’s, all 7 of them, becomes more and more important as the buyer experience becomes more fragmented and as companies start losing control of how, when and where consumers interact with their brands.  I tend to believe marketing departments will need to be qualified to support building a brand through all the 7 P’s and to do so will need to be able to contribute in terms of strategic counsel, research, training, selling techniques, lead tracking, merchandising, interior design, signage, etc.  I would be remiss if I didn’t point out any, and all, of the P’s are not discussed in a void – contextually all demand an understanding of the brand, its objectives and business strategy. It demands identifying what the customer needs, wants and values, and then continue to grow and evolve the business as the customer grows and evolves. Just ponder.

Uh oh. Your company has slid down the slippery slope of brilliant irrelevance. Your business is in trouble.

This sucks because in the not too distant past you were standing at the top of the mountain looking down on everyone — head in the clouds blinded by bright success. Unfortunately, being at the top is heady business and companies easily, and often, step a little too far. Actually, you probably stepped nowhere, but instead the edge of the mountain eroded under your feet because you were looking up too much <or at the gobs of money you were making> and … oops … you just slid down the slope.

Here’s the good news. You have a chance. Albeit it is a small chance. But you do have a chance to get the hell off the slope and resurrect that frickin’ mountain you were standing on before. It’s a small chance because a whole bunch of things need to be done and need to be done right AND need to go right … but it can be done.

Some branding expert once wrote about this topic and cranked out the eight P’s <purpose, promise, people, product, place, price, promotion and performance> as “the way” to resurrect your company.

Uhm.

First. There is no ‘the way.’

Second. It’s a nice trick using all that assonance <all the P stuff>, but before anything else would happen I imagine most people would tell him to ‘piss off’ <that may be the 8^th P> rather than try and do all those things.

Third. Resurrection is hard. It is pushing that boulder back up the mountain.

So while many things need to go right I would say success in business resurrection resides in doing a few things well, with focus, and lots of resilience and determination. Of course, I am not as smart as that branding expert … so you may want to take these thoughts with a grain of salt: 

–          Refocus.

This is about focusing the entire organization. This can be resetting, it can be redefining, or it can simply be realizing that you have lost your focus. Personally, I am never quite on board with the people who say you need to redefine because that assumes you had a crappy definition in the first place which seems unlikely if you actually made it to the top (or close). More likely this is simply refocusing on what got you to the mountain top in the first place.
Refocusing the organization begins with clearly defining the brand and business vision and goals. I know where I mostly get aggravated with ‘rebranding experts’ is that they always seem to suggest a company needs something ‘new’  or recreate or, well, they seem focused on something new and glittery.

Here is a business truth. Brands and companies win not on glitter, but on the grind. And the grind is, well, not glittery. I say that because while you are grinding away and making gobs of money there will always be a bunch of people showing you shiny glittery objects suggesting now that you have had some success in the grind, you should be more, well, fabulous. They whisper “you are better than a ‘grind brand and company.’” Within that tempting glittery ‘I want to be fabulous’ gauntlet many a good company grinding away has been lured away from its focus. In fact. I would suggest the more success <or ongoing failure> a company has the easier it is to lose ‘grind focus‘. It is only when you aren’t entirely resoundingly successful or resoundingly a failure that you keep your nose to the grindstone. I imagine my point is that focus, in and of itself, isn’t glittery. To get off the slippery slope of irrelevance you often need to shed the glitter and refind the grindstone. And, yes, I purposefully chose this metaphor on my first point to reemphasize … this is work. This is hard.

And there is not a lot of glitter in refocusing <and resurrection> a business.

–          Relevance
This is about refinding the company’s true relevance. Because first & foremost the company has to have the perception <internally and externally> it is better at something. That almost sounds silly to point out, but if a company is in a resurrection crisis mode 99% of the time that ‘lack of focus’ that got them here has led to what I refer to as ‘fragmented relevance.’ What I mean is that success often breeds ‘following additional sales’ rather than ‘leading to additional sales.’ Let me explain. At some point things were going well and it became really really easy to begin to make niche or small business exceptions under the guise of ‘the customer wants it’ and it gave some signs of incremental sales <maybe not profit>. Your balance sheet is becoming strewn with these little exceptions which inflate your revenue and sales, but you aren’t making shit for profit from them. You are doing a lot but not getting a lot of return out of what you are doing.

This leads back to relevance. A company fools themselves into believing they are offering something relevant because they are responding to a customer, but it isn’t better or distinct, you are simply attempting to meet a customer need/desire.

In branding words you are flooding your brand with indistinct commodity like features. While each little thing looks … well, little, when viewed as a whole it becomes confusing to the outside world. What are you really good at? What is your best product? All that kind of stuff. You’ve lost perception relevance in people’s minds.

Ah. You have simply slipped down the slippery slope of irrelevance.

Many times a company will have to shed product/service offerings to resurrect. Uh oh. I told you this was difficult. If it helps, think of these things as little rocks weighing you down pulling you further down the slope <as well as making it an increased burden as you try and pull your company back up the slope>. Make sure that ‘better’ <the promise you are offering to anyone who wants to be associated with you> is relevant — to them, not to you.

** note: assessing what you need to shed can be very easy, shedding is often very difficult. I often ask businesses “how far would you go to survive” and “be prepared to abandon everything it does to survive.”

This means defining where you want the brand to be and then deciding how to get there.

This means making sure you are selling people ONLY the things that make you better. This sometimes means moving one foot forward to follow your customer as they have also become older and yet keep one foot solidly in a growing customer base.

Does this mean the company has to mean everything to everyone? Absolutely not. It is just all about remaining relevant to enough people so that you have a meaningful place in the world of business. 

–          Align 

This is always the tricky part. Whatever you have decided the focus is, you need to align everyone internally <without diminishing autonomy> and you need to reinforce this externally <consistent attitude & behavior>. A company has to be mercilessly disciplined and yet maintain the flexibility to accommodate the true fact that ‘a great plan never lives beyond first contact with the enemy.’ I imagine using the P methodology could help because this is what the five of the P’s are all about: people, product, place, price and promotion.

People.

You have to be disciplined on the focus anchor of the business pendulum. The pendulum will swing. You just want to insure that everyone’s pendulum is swinging off the same axis. There has to be employee commitment and confidence. In fact, in resurrection mode, they need to be ‘reinspired.’ This is very difficult during resurrection because you have most likely decreased the number of offerings <which implies they will have less to satisfy the customer with> and you may have laid some people off.

The organization has to believe that there is a <planned> future, the future will happen and that they can help.

Next. The products and services are the tangible evidence of the focus and relevance.

A company’s ONLY chance of resurrection is to be ruthless in assessing their product portfolio. Absolutely frickin’ ruthless. I will outline in price how I would go about figuring this out.

The next P is ‘place.’ Personally I think this is a forced P. This is about the experience or however and whenever and wherever a potential customer interacts and has an experience with your product portfolio and people.  Some people call this the face of the brand.

I don’t really care what you call it. The experience must be consistent everywhere. No ifs, ands or buts.

Ah. Then there is price. Whew. Resurrection almost always falls apart here. I almost always suggest a company do an audit of all their sales and define two main things:

–          How many sales did you make at full price <no customer discounts or exceptions or whatever>

–          How many sales did you make with an acceptable profit.

I almost always begin here because not enough companies do this. In addition it shines a spotlight on where they make money and how they make money.

I am not opposed to discounting <because there are some psychological aspects of selling it appeals to>, but I am opposed to not having an everyday price perception. Too often customer research will come back and say something like “well, that isn’t their real price.”

That’s bad.

People need to know your price or at least your pricing strategy. A good place to always start <part one> is simply decrease an emphasis on discounting.  An overemphasis on deals and discounts builds deal loyalty rather real loyalty <note: discounting is scary to eliminate>.

A good place to start <part 2> is clearly define your pricing strategy. Despite what you may believe. a company does not have to be low price every day.

Yes. Building value perceptions is really difficult. But you know what? So is resurrecting your company. Resurrection doesn’t even get off the ground if you screw up your pricing <value proposition>. As hard as it is to accept, resurrection is really not about sales, it is about value perceptions <sales will follow>.

Chew on that one for a while.

Promotion <or how and what you communicate>. Theme, slogan, visuals, sounds, it doesn’t matter.

Too often someone comes dancing in from the outside suggesting that “how exciting … you are rebranding! … we need to build some excitement!! … some flash & sizzle!!!” <and, yes, the number of exclamation points increase as the conversation continues>. To use Tolkien: “not all that glitters is gold.” Go back to my first point, companies and brands win by grinding. All communications, first and foremost, must be reflective of ‘the alignment grind.’ A consistent reflection of that promise. Disconnected messages and tactics destroy alignment, destroy inspiration internally, and destroy brands externally.

Ok.

Here is your bottom line on business resurrection. You want to, and have to, produce the right results, but you need to do it the right way.

Resurrection is relentlessly unforgiving.

Truth — you are honestly already on your way to death if you need to be resurrected. It drives me a little crazy that more companies don’t take on a ‘do this or die’ attitude in resurrection mode. Of course they are nervous <if not scared> so they inevitably discuss easing changes and gradually shifting … its crazy.

Resurrection is about shaking the etch a sketch or you slide down to the bottom of the slippery slope of irrelevance and die.

=======

Originally published November 2013

  ===

“Choose your corner, pick away at it carefully, intensely and to the best of your ability and that way you might change the world.”

Charles Eames

—–

So. This is most likely a bookend post to my “where are you going?” thought piece which was directed to younger people. This is directed to the 50somethings who actually figured out, as well as anyone can, where they wanted to go … and went there.

To be clear. This is not about “was this not what I wanted”  — that is about questioning direction. This is actually about, well, assessing value for the direction you chose and the direction you have no, or few, regrets over.

That said.

What happens if you believe you have something of value to offer the world, and you actually did it and earned a consistent living and … uhm … you find yourself in a place and time where, well, you aren’t sure you have anything to show for it?

It’s not that you weren’t good at what you did <you may have actually been pretty good>.

It’s not that you didn’t earn some good salaries <you may have actually earned higher than the norm>.

It’s not that when viewing your professional resume you sucked <because others can view it and think ‘huh, that’s good stuff’>.

It’s not that your personal life is strewn with divorces or negative broken relationships <because you can actually look around and see some good friends, look at past relationships as generally good and your current personal life relatively healthy>.

It’s not that you don’t look out at the whole world and think “I have no value moving forward” <because you most likely feel like you have something to offer given the right situation>.

It’s not even that you are unhappy <because, in general, you view most days in a relatively optimistic way>.

In fact, taking all of that into consideration you can look at your life and say “I knew where I wanted to go and, in general, I did a pretty good job getting there.”

But.

Let’s say that the average American worker/person most likely has worked about 60,000 hours or so by the time they are 50 <a lower income worker/person who scrambles to earn enough most likely has worked about 70,000 hours – and earned less – and someone like me who likes their work and is a quasi-workaholic will have worked closer to 90,000 hours> and your current steady current annual income is enough to get by, but certainly not more than enough to pay bills and the random expenses that come up.

And you have some debt, no savings and, well, financially there is no room for much more than basics because, while professionally successful, you find yourself in a position where you can now relate to people in poverty <in some ways> in that you are constantly preparing for the next inevitable expense.

Life isn’t bad.

But.

You wonder what you have to show for it all.

You don’t dwell on it but it’s a niggling feeling especially if you did work hard, you did it the right way and you actually did some good shit on occasion.

I imagine this is nothing like fantasizing about being rich.

And I imagine it has little to do with regrets.

It simply revolves around effort expended and gains to show for that effort.

The truth is life, in general, almost always equates to some type of value equation – did I receive acceptable value for the cost incurred.

Most of us are fairly content with a nine-to-five job and people like me who love what they do are actually happy with an 8 to 6+ job and most of us realize we will never buy some island or even have some extraordinarily luxurious vacation when it is all said and done.

But.

I imagine everyone, excepting the wealthy, stop at some point and think “what do I have to show for it all?”

I imagine everyone, excepting the wealthy, stop at some point and realize that rest is a luxury only for the rich and retirement doesn’t mean doing nothing — just maybe something different.

Look.

Life naturally causes you to question yourself and feel like there is some grand design out there to frustrate and defeat you.

And you know what?

Most of us recognize it isn’t easy, and that it sucks to have to brush off the inevitable natural disappointments which occur even if you have worked hard and tried to do the right thing and conduct yourself with integrity, but we, more often than not, just get up and get going again. And we do that without really questioning ourselves. It is just what you do and what Life demands.

So.

That said.

But.

But you wonder about your worth professionally or personally when you don’t really have a lot to show for it.

It is basically a value question.

This is about that someone, sitting at home some nights, saying to themselves … “What the fuck do I have to show for what I did?”

Its just the pragmatic basic formula to assess value.

Someone asks themselves “what I did”:

Over 60,000 hours worked.

Some good titles on your resume.

Some great memories.

Add in some other positives.

And then they sit back and look around at today.

Materially, tangibly, you may have diddleyshit.

Professionally, you may be in a diddleyshit position.

Financially, you may have diddleyshit.

And in that time, in that place, in that mental space it can be fairly easy to view “what do I have to show for it all” as … well … diddleyshit.

And I imagine viewing it that way … well … sucks.

I imagine at this point I could sagely lean back in my chair <assuming the chair was a recliner> and wisely place my hand under my chin and sigh … and say:

“you have made a difference in other people’s lives through your integrity driven actions … you personally have memories, experiences and successes to show for it all … reflect upon that … oh … and you are a good person.”

But I won’t say that.

Because while that may be true, it is bullshit in this time place and situation for someone in this position.

Its bullshit because more often than not people will view this “what I put into Life and what did I get out of that effort” in a fairly selfish way. In other words:

“what does it matter if I was a good person if I don’t have diddleyshit to show for it?”

To be clear. This is actually an okay version of selfishness.

It’s okay because you put in the effort, you worked hard, you did things the right way, you didn’t cut corners, you didn’t demand much, therefore, you want to take a moment and reflect on what YOU “have to show for it all.”

And, selfishly, it looks like you have diddleysquat to show for it.

And, selfishly, scanning your Life … well … it kind of looks like if you don’t want to be in this diddleysquat spot you gotta get back up and start all over again.

Ok.

I don’t have answers for this one.

But I do know what I am discussing happens. And maybe more often than everyone thinks. And the answer will be driven by what matters most to a particular individual.

Those who valued family above all will reflect on the value equation with that as a foundation.

Those who valued professional success will reflect on the value equation with that as a foundation.

Those who valued … well … pick your passion & focus which got you to where you are now and you will assess “what do I have to show for it all?” based on that foundation.

To be clear. If you are not careful they are simply nice condiment sbeing placed on a nothingburger.

To be clear. This doesn’t have shit to do with whether you had a shit life or not <because most would say they didn’t have a shit life> nor does it have to do with being ‘filled or unfulfilled’ or even having been ‘inspired’ in Life, this is clearly “I didn’t have, or live, a shit life … but I’m not sure I have shit to show for it.”

And, yeah, maybe my thinking is driven more by a world that is driven by outcomes and materialistic assessment, but I would also be unenlightened <if not stupid> if I ignored that.

For all I write about the grind of life and the consistency <not exactly drudgery> of most of Life, most people really don’t drift through life, most people are aware of Life <at least when it truly matters> and most people find moments of inspiration that lift Life above … well … nothingness.

But.

At some point most people sit down, pull out the Life balance sheet, put all the shit they have done in Life as well as all the shit they have accumulated and lost <money, jobs, things>, put the amount of energy & work they invested in Life that has been invested up to that point and sit back and see what they have to show for it all.

Does the work, the fun & the hard, equal the output?

Does the work, the fun & the hard, equal what I have to show for it as I look around what I have?

And, yes, this implies I believe this assessment has accumulation of shit over time as well as what has been accumulated and is currently in hand.

I imagine the comparable discussion is if you have put in 10,000 hours of practice playing the piano you want to be able to show everyone you can play something other than chopsticks.

Anyway.

I have been part of several of these discussions and … well … they are difficult. Shit. I have had these discussion with myself.

The harsh truth is that platitudes & ‘feel good’ assessments seem not enough. Good, maybe even great from a feeling perspective, but, well, not good enough for all the hours invested and energy expended.

Yeah.

Money does matter <financial security>

Yeah.

Material shit does matter <Life environment rewards>.

Certainly not the only things that matters, but in a Life value equation, they matter when you decide to sit down and say “what do I have to show for it all?”

—————-

“Where a society is defined by its boundaries, a culture is defined by its horizon. A boundary is a phenomenon of opposition. A horizon is a phenomenon of vision. One cannot look at a horizon, it is simply the point beyond which we cannot see. One never reaches a horizon. It is not a line, it has no place, it encloses no field, its location is always relative to the view.”

James Carse

——————-

Let me begin by suggesting a company has one of 2 choices to meet its objectives:

– enable innate desire for meaningfulness

– exploit people as resources

Most companies build an environment somewhere in the wretched hollow inbetween with a practical emphasis on the latter and superficial emphasis on the former.

That said.

Technology plays a significant role. It plays a role because it amplifies. It is here that I will suggest that morality, ethics and empathy need technology. Yes. I just said that. The destiny of all those things are dependent upon technology. If that is so then I imagine I could say society’s fate resides in the hands of technology. That may seem backwards in that all of these things reside in humans, not technology. Well. They do but technology will either flatten, amplify or even extend the reach of all. I am certainly not suggesting that technology will guarantee morality or ethical behavior, but I would suggest improving technology increases the likelihood that morality and ethical behavior becomes more pervasive (expansive) all of which are integral to a healthy culture.

Technology, in and of itself, is nothing. Without people, without people generating content, it is a passive tool regenerating itself to its own purposes. Yet. Once humans become involved technology begins to amplify – amplify divides, fragments, groups and tribes. It is within the fragmentation aspect in which we begin to pause on the benefits of technology with regard to society. The fragmentation, the phrasing of ideas, ideologies, values, norms and actual ideological commitments just begin to blur the greater truths associated with each. Fragments get emphasized to strengthens pieces of views all the while blurring larger issues.

Today I propose a business model which proactively seeks anticipatory triggers to predict emergent activity and yet keeps people’s heads on a swivel for the unseen triggers which activate ‘surprises’ or opportunities.  And that is where technology can play a role – a significant role.

It is a business environment in which technology is a distributor of data, and knowledge (Intelligence Driven Software) and data drives strategic decision-making. This means Data drives potential, not just efficiency in decision-making & strategy, but effectiveness. The value of an AI infrastructure, leaning on algorithms, is that knowledge tends to pool rather than trickle throughout. AI (algorithms) become the irrigation system for institutional knowledge, data, individual knowledge and resources. In fact. Algorithms may actually be the order needed to provide the guardrails to an emergent organization.

Note: Some thoughts on the Intelligence Based Software (IBS) Concept

At its core this intelligence software is an iterative knowledge distribution system grounded in both predictive (recognized) patterns and emergent (unpredictable) patterns.

I envision a two stream of intelligence, one predictive and one emergent. The concern with having only a predictive stream, one based on boundaries, is even constantly evolving technology cannot outrun problems or be fluid enough to recognize emergent patterns (even technology doesn’t know what it doesn’t know). So, I envision a software intelligence/information distribution infrastructure which is rigid enough in one stream to consistently distribute useful intelligence, based on recognized symbols/words/topics, to have pattern recognition and, yet, have another stream which is fluid enough to reimagine patterns.

The intent is to find the optimal newness in intelligence, i.e., purposefully build in some intelligence dissonance with the information flow with the objective to both captures defined ontologies as well as escape from defined ontologies. Bottom line. Context matters. If we change the circumstances, we change the inspiration. The intent is to inspire from the known and the unknown.

This is an ambitious idea. it seeks to corral the ambiguity in the larger system of intelligence, as expressed by humans, and share it with people with enough clarity of the complexity challenge that someone, or someones, become curious enough to conceptualize ideas. This idea is an attempt to appeal to the rationality, and irrationality, of thinking minds. Explore the recognizable patterns, the easiest to replicate resources efficiently against, and explore the unrecognizable patterns which may represent the most effective velocity opportunities.

This is where I connect business culture to technology.

I would argue a business needs a culture to even envision the potential of an Intelligence based Software (IBS) structure. What I mean by that is:

(a) simply placing IBS into a business will not generate any meaningful behavior response (note: this is similar to most digital transformation plans),

(b) simply getting people to use an IBS system will not generate any meaningful results, and

(c) meaningful behavior and meaningful results are only achieved if the culture embraces the idea of people being augmented by IBS.

We should always remind ourselves of what James Carse said, “Since a culture is not anything persons do, but anything they do with each other we may say a culture comes into being whenever persons choose to be a people. It is as a people that they arrange their rules with each other, their moralities, their modes of communication.”  While I (slightly) hesitate to suggest people, technology (software) and information, each by themselves, are simply discernible bits of something that are actually nothings, I will suggest in a Conceptual Age frame of mind those things are nothing until they actually “do with each other” and collectively create progress. a culture forges them all together into something worthwhile.

From a larger perspective one could suggest the Cloud is the key to making it all work but the truth is, from a more granular pragmatic aspect, it will most likely be cognitive algorithms (intelligence-based software). Yes. Progress, and agility, isn’t tied to access of knowledge, but rather use of knowledge by individuals and individuals interacting with each other. Its within the collective interaction, culture engaging with a system, from which continuous improvement and progress is found. I would be remiss if I didn’t note that the truth is if you have to “reskill” your employees, it’s a reflection that you have not created an organization in which people are “continuously skilling”. Create a business that is continuously improving, even its employees, and you will never have to “reskill.” In fact. Just create a Conceptual Age organization and you are set (but I am biased).

One of the questions I asked myself is not only can an organization be 100% emergent, but if it actually were could it have a healthy culture (because culture does need some predictability)? Well. I believe yes and no. Yes because people behavior naturally arcs toward predictive, repetitive, behavior and rhythms. So, while the structure may encourage 100% emergent, people will inevitably seek some aspects of predictable. That also explains the no. No replication of systems & process ignores the fact replicable activity is where pockets of efficiency reside and without any replicable behavior optimal organizational efficacy can never be achieved. And maybe this is where I touch on Purpose a bit because I envision someone saying to themselves “well, if the organization has a Purpose, that would probably resolve his concerns.”

Individuals can have a Purpose and, in fact, if tap into Purpose are happier, healthier and more productive.

I do not believe Business has a Purpose in the sense Purpose is typically discussed. I don’t believe ‘shareholder value’ is a Purpose, it is simply an objective (which creates systems in the business to achieve). I believe business has intentions. These intentions can get masked by visions or missions, both of the which can play valuable roles, but I believe a business should lay out its intentions. An intent to contribute to the environment. An intent to act with integrity every day. An intent to engage with community. Within these intentions the people IN the organization then have a variety of paths they can choose to walk on – and clearly see where paths do not lie. I hesitate to call these principles because, well, they seem simply like intentions. With intentions understood a business can have a community of people interested in working coherently (some people may call this culture) and pursue quests to fulfill those intentions.

“Community is the fact that we work toward the same goal, that we accept our respective roles in order to reach it.  Values is the fact we trust each other. And, culture?   Culture is as much about what we encourage as what we actually permit. That matters because most people don’t do what we tell them to. They do what we let them get away with.”

Fredrick Backman

In having intentions and pursuing quests the business rely less on not having to tell people what they cannot get away with and encourage them more to go do what they can do. People gain knowledge, get better at whatever they do (and how they think), there is continuous improvement, progress is achieved (for the individual and the business), quests are pursued and everyone feels a sense of meaning in having contributed. That is possibly the best summary of what I envision a Conceptual Age Organization is.

With all of those positive organizational attributes there is a technology truth: “The computer is a moron.” (Peter F. Drucker) Ok, it’s not, but it has its limitations. On this topic I am reminded of Intelligence Analyst Walter Laqueur in 1988 “A World of Secrets” saying “the need for Human Intelligence has not decreased, but it has become fashionable to denigrate the importance of humans assets because technical means (technology) are politically and intellectually more comfortable.” This came at the height of the struggle going on in the world of intelligence between those who deny the usefulness of agent and those who defended the worth of Human Intelligence in the face of the technological revolution.  At the time the New York Times estimated, from intelligence officials, 85% of all information gathered came from all the hardware sources (ELINT/SIGINT/PHOTINT/RADINT) opposed to information gained by spies (HUMINT).

The ultimate conclusion the intelligence experts reached was “what’s the good of knowing the SIGINT without knowing what the motive is.” In other word, technology shows, humans understand. AI, technology, will never replace humans.

Which leads me to organizational culture, the difference between collaboration and the collective acting coherently and technology. Organizational collaboration, technically, doesn’t need to be led. I will also suggest that collaboration does not guarantee success. Collaboration, done poorly and in the wrong culture, can actually lead to mediocrity. What s much better for a business is a community of people, collectively behaving in a coherent way, pursuing a common quest. Technology can play an integral role.

Technology offers the public transportation of data, knowledge and words – to & from the cloud to the people. At the core of this business model I am suggesting (an emergent conceptual organization) is the relationship between people and accessible knowledge through technology.

The cloud elevates all businesses to the level of the best generic technology. Think of it as the common power grid from which a business opens up for business daily. But the power of the cloud is it elevates the greater potential of any business as it taps into shared information to supplement, & compliment, the institutional data – while maintaining privacy of the institution itself.

While the cloud represents an almost limitless pool of ever-growing knowledge and data, I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that the cloud, in and of itself, can be just as stupid, if not stupider, than any one individual. More knowledge, used poorly, simply makes one stupider rather than smarter. The collective knowledge is only as good as who uses it.

As a corollary, individuals, and small groups of people, within an institution (augmented by the cloud collective knowledge) get smarter iteratively (even if they misuse knowledge because they learn from mistakes). Conceptually they get smarter than the cloud due to understanding of context.

I say all of this because in a conceptual age, in which understanding concepts and implementing well against them being the objective of the institution, these separate ideas should remain separate & distinct from each other. This must remain so because conversely, the more similar the two concepts get the more stupid both ideas get (arcs toward mediocrity in terms of response to emergent concepts).

“In all things that are purely social, we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress. There is no defense or security for any of us except in the highest intelligence and development of all.”

Booker T. Washington

Once again. the collective mind, the cloud, can be just as stupid as any one single less informed individual. A large quantity of collected data/knowledge does not guarantee smart solutions in contextual conceptual environments. In general, people create smart solutions, therefore, an emergent organization must balance the collective and individual(s) collaboration to command the highest order of value against emergent opportunities. And, in general, technology creates organizational stupidity when the culture does not embrace it’s thinking potential and simply use it as tools to ‘do’. The smartest organizations will be the ones in which there is a strong culture attracted to the benefits of technology and, specifically, an Intelligence Based Software system constantly feeding them predictive and emergent knowledge to assist them thinking conceptually about the business at hand.

==========

“Waiting for big ideas is intellectual escapism.”

===================

‘Institutional inertia’ needed to be countered. There is no doubt we are at the moment is on a journey, and that journey needs to arrive at a place of inclusion further on than we are at the moment.

What matters to me in terms of my own responsibility and my own advocacy is that we don’t settle for second best, that we keep trying to move the organisation forward.”

—–

Paul Bayes

==================

“But the brain does much more than just recollect it inter-compares, it synthesizes, it analyzes, it generates abstractions. The simplest thought like the concept of the number one has an elaborate logical underpinning. “

—

Carl Sagan

============

Work the system, culture will follow. As a corollary, work the data, knowledge will follow.

These thoughts are related if not intertwined in today’s business world.

Currently business gathers gobs of information, knowledge and data and generally don’t really know what to do with it (effectively). That’s why people lean in on generalizations which drive towards superficial decisions. They know they have something important but, more often than not, just aren’t sure what they have.

That summarizes maybe 95% of any company gathering data.

That summarizes maybe 95% of any company discussing culture.

Because of this a business typically does one of two things:

• is as smart about it as possible and have humans use what they can as well as they can, or,
• delegate to machines/tech/algorithms (which will always be flawed because it cannot accommodate human irrationality).

Frankly, this is the wretched in-between. They neither optimize the data or utilize even the best data.

Even worse this typically means the system is ignored. This is worse because culture typically mirrors systems and when systems are being used, or ignored, or even used improperly (including the use of good data), some wacky things happen to the culture. Wacky in that it loses its moorings and behavior gets tethered to some dubious ‘values’ which come and go depending on how the system is used. This happens because the moorings are to data, and what data tells us, rather than critical thinking on what is the right, and best, thing to do.

This is where little data comes into play.

Little data can make disproportionately big differences to culture. For while it’s true a business truly only needs a smaller amount of relevant data to make big learnings and big differences, small uses of data used without any true rigor, also creates some big consequences – sometimes even some big differences. In fact, I could argue small amounts of data can create a really big shitstorm.

“I am 100% certain that I am 0% sure of what I’m going to do.”

Parks & Recreation

Interestingly, one of the greatest examples of this shitstorm is the concept of programmatic:

——————————-

Programmatic:

“X company” activates 87% percent of media spend in programmatic channels, with traders trained on multiple platforms. The “company” executes complex technical strategies, like retargeting shoppers from display to YouTube, or designing a pixel recency strategy that ensures retargeting bids are in balance with a shopper’s site history.

Using custom machine-learning algorithms, the system optimizes programmatic bids to drive lift against business KPIs. Different algorithms optimize to different KPIs, whether that’s user acquisition or sales.

All this helps find efficiencies while still seeking creative optimization and sequential messaging to personalize campaigns for individual consumers.

————————

What a bunch of technical baloney wherein they dance on the heads of a bunch of pins suggesting that instead of deflating imaginative balloons to uncover ideas the business their techniques will inflate ‘big ideas’ by pin pricks of reductive tactics. Smart bullshit, but bullshit nonetheless.

Once again. Systems are people and people are inherently impacted by systems.

And, yes, data can play a role in some small ways, that lead to big differences, but in general things like programmatic dwell on the superficial insignificance of the overall needs of things. And maybe that is my point. Anyone can make small things look big & important, but not everyone can discern the small things that actually make big important things.

=====

“You’ve got to think about the big things while your doing small things, so that all the small things go in the right direction.”

Alvin Toffler

===============

Look. I admit this isn’t easy.

Business doesn’t really make it easy for us. It kind of encourages us to be sure to focus on big stuff, and little stuff, at the exact same time <all the while encouraging us to focus on one thing and do it well>. That said. It rewards ‘big’ at an exponentially higher level while penalizing at an exponentially higher level for small (even if you do it well consistently).

At exactly the same time business asks us to squeeze as much as is feasible into the smallest increments of time as possible. AND, at exactly the same time we are encouraged to think big, have big ideas and do big things.

Its nuts.

In addition. I would argue that most of us get “big” wrong <because the truth is that identifying the ‘big’ for us is closer to 0 than it is to 100>.

Let me digress and discuss the relationship between big & small a bit before I get back to data.

Big things are seemingly easy to do because we all see them. And they appear easy to check off our “to do” list. But, inevitably, it seems like everything really does come down to the little things, which unfortunately, we have a nasty habit of overlooking <not necessarily on purpose>. That’s bad <that overlooking thing>. It can be a big mistake <which is a big thing by the way> and a large creation of stress in our life <another big thing>.

This mistake gets compounded by a truth that small things most often have a large impact to alleviate some of these potentially negative ‘big’ things in our lives. Take a moment and think about it. Stress can be partially managed by doing a couple of really small things like ‘show up on time’, ‘listen’, well, you get it. This is true with even small amounts of data used well. Smartly used data can highlight impending problems which can then be head off at the pass.

Yeah.  Sometimes small important things sound small.  But do big things. Make a big impact.

Anyway. Getting back to little data.

Man’s shoulders full of dandruff

For the most part little data creates little differentiation. This isn’t because little data is useless, but rather because the little data we grab most often is the stuff that just keeps us chugging along without having to think too hard or have to ‘overthink’ too much. We use just enough of that oil (remember – data is oil) to keep the existing engines running smoothly.

“The belief that the commonplace is really worth looking at, and the courage to look at it with a minimum of theorizing”

John Szarkowski

I would also suggest that data, little or big, requires making decisions.

Aw shit. Decisions.

Suffice it to say decisions, in general, are hard to make <even by people who are quite capable of making a good hard decision>. Decisions are hard mostly because you are guessing or judging probabilities on consequences (even with data in hand).

Decisions, in and of themselves, are easy.

Consequences, in and of themselves, are a real sonuvabitch.

And this is where I come back to data.

Consequences are such a sonuvabitch we overwhelm ourselves with data attempting to make a probability a prediction. Okay. Maybe let me say it this way. We overwhelm ourselves with the data we want to make probability a prediction. I say that because “overwhelming” can be done with lots of data poorly used and little data misused. Either way, in doing so we, well, we lose sight of everything else.

He blew on one of the dandelions, and the whole world disappeared.

Which leads me to how we mitigate our risk.

Over fitting. While overfitting is a data analysis term, it’s also a human bias. I would also suggest overfitting is the greatest enemy of conceptual thinking (which would then make it the greatest enemy of an organization).

This may be one of the few times I compare humans to machines. At the core of machine learning are programs that learn from past experience. This actually means machine learning can arc toward increased performance or poor performance as it navigates underfitting and overfitting.

Simplistically, this is exactly the situation human decisionmakers in a business are faced with. In fact, I would argue because of the feelings of uncertainty that business complexity inherently creates, combined with business’s general penalization of risk to employees, the battle between underfitting, appropriate fitting and over fitting will define who wins the future war in the future of work.

Overfitting is one of the banes of business – it is a reflection of the ongoing battle between certainty & uncertainty. it is actually the response to people who do not understand probabilities and fear explaining uncertainty, randomness and the sometimes quirkiness of anything to do with people. Overfitting, in business, is the response to survival in the corporate world.

And, once again, I would point out that overfitting does not demand a shitload of data. In fact. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out many many businesses do not really invest in a lot of useful data therefore the small data they have, when overfitted, only increases the likelihood of bigger mistakes. But. More often than not someone will bludgeon you with a dull axe of data points believing ‘more mitigates risk.’

That said. All of this leads me back to little data.

I will suggest focusing small. Focus on small amounts of data, data that shows the underpinnings of patterns, avoid data exceptions, and make the decision.

The truth is Data, and information, has diminishing returns in any given context. In other words, cramming more data or information in adds value, but in diminishing returns. You keep thinking ‘if I add this one more little thing it will finally uncover the bigness thing I am searching for’. Well. It will not. I would argue if you gather a small amount of useful data well, anything big that could be discovered will be increasingly likely to be found there.

** note: read my piece called data decipherer or my piece called data, music and stories

In the end.

Most often it is the little things that are the truly important things. Little data showcases cracks in differentiation which can be exploited to a business’s benefit. Which leads to end where I began – work the system, culture will follow. This piece may seem like it is about data and data analysis, but it is actually about business culture. How you use data is part of the system of how a business works which inevitably begets a culture. Risk, critical thinking, understanding connectivity and complexity, all of those things are embedded in how a business uses its data. All of those things, are, well, culture. Ponder.

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“When leaders and organizations develop skills without cultivating energy, the result is organizations (and schools) filled with spiritless specialists.”

Zach Mercurio

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Bastian Lehman, the CEO of Postmates:

No competitive advantage should come at the expense of workers.

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Leda Glyptis wrote this in one of her pieces: “It took me a long time to admit to myself that hard work delivering results is not the same as work that has an impact.”

Early in your career you are demanded (pressured) to show you can get things done. Results is the key to unlocking pay, respect, promotion and even some independence (getting your boss of your back). I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that early in your career getting things is mostly tied to some specialist role (although if you pay attention you learn that getting things done well incorporates a lot of generalist, and relational, aspects).

That said.

I was slightly different than Leda in that I always sensed impact was more important than simply generating results. It made my career tricky, or, as one co-worker said to me later in Life “you always liked to do it your way.” The difficulty in focusing on impact is that most people want to focus on process with regard to creating impact. To be clear that process does not have to always be efficiency. Business, if you generate results, can be quite accommodating to an effectiveness ideology. Regardless. Business, in focusing on results, tends to encourage spiritless engagement. Now. They would never tell you that. They speak of culture, passion, caring about your work, etc. ad nausea in fact. But. Deliver results and business can overlook a lot of shit. The problem is, well, inevitably you cannot overlook that shit. If you are really honest with yourself a career of results can feel a bit hollow. It will feel a bit like you missed something. You may not know exactly what you missed but if nudged a bit you’ll most likely speak of some missing engagement aspect.

Simple doing only contains, and retains, a certain amount of value. And when you assess that value, while it does have value, it doesn’t quite measure up to the highest value you may see when you look around. And, well, for a results person, this may feel like assessing your results and finding them wanting a bit.

** note: on specialists and specialism. To be clear, I am not anti-specialist. In fact, specializing can be quite rewarding. In fact, being a spirited specialist can be incredibly rewarding. I would argue to be a spirited specialist one would be a craftsperson with their skill. I believe it is Jackson & Jackson, “How to Speak Human”, who pointed out the shift from craftsmanship to professionalism (where we went from being a profession, and having a profession, to creating an industry of professionalism. This distinction is most likely the difference between spirited specialist and spiritless specialist. I am a self-proclaimed generalist, loving knowing some about many things, and yet I can be quite envious of the specialist who sees their specific skill as a craft and wield it as a craft. Ponder.

Now. It would be silly to not admit that the internet, or technology, hasn’t played a role in this.

All the internet has done is tightened the gap between mediocre professional experience and talented young learner.

Oh.

In addition, it has blurred the value in true professional experience <what to do with what you actually learn> and learning.

Oh.

In addition, the internet <and our generation in its insane focus on simplifying everything> have blurred the contrast between what is truly complex and what is truly simple.

Oh.

In addition, the internet, in combination with an insanely stupid focus on short term results defining a decision/choice, has created an impression speed has more value than, well, anything else. In other words what experience truly brings, ‘slow down a little to speed up’ skill, is more challenged than ever before.

All the digital age has done is commoditize experience perception-wise and it is up to someone with experience to decommoditisize it in reality. It is was true yesterday, true today and will be true tomorrow. Not everyone can do any job and a complex job can never be simplified.

All of this leads me to the fact Zach Mercurio, author of The Invisible Leader and the best speaker on Purpose I know, talks about impact all the time. Sometimes people miss that as they navigate their own visceral response, and biases/opinions/attitudes, as he speaks about Purpose.

“I’ve been thinking about this for a while. How do so many extremely talented people become so miserable in organizations?”

Zach Mercurio

Impact, from a personal perspective, once you get your head wrapped around something other than results, is fairly easy.

Impact, from a business perspective, is trickier – but rather simple and easy.

When I was doing strategy work for businesses I kind of became known for my ‘better’ strategies and questions.

How does this make a person better?

How does this make a life better?

How does this make the society better?

How does this make things better for a person in making the world better?

While, yes, products and services are inevitably problem solvers and people buy products & services to solve problems, that simplistic value equation/assessments provides the opportunity for that product and service to:

• Absolve itself for any accountability beyond simply solving that problem
• Miss the opportunity value of not being spiritless (while I do not believe Purpose adds value I do believe when embedded there is a halo effect of intangible value)

‘Better’ forces a business to ask some hard questions.

Now. While Zach and I would most likely have a healthy debate on how tightly I attach value to impact, in my view, a business has to. This, in my opinion, is not to the detriment of individual assessment of impact (in fact I think it can often create a healthy layer). Better is an easy thing to grasp. Yeah. Maybe too easy in its ability to morph into some possibly not-really-that-better things but, in general, it provides a compass toward good, not bad.

Business, being business, has always wanted to quantify ‘better’ inevitably seeking to shift it into the results category.

** note: this is why I almost always balk at empathy, authenticity, mindfulness in business because I believe they are embedded and not objectives, but business will always seek to quantify (assess results)

If you decide impact is more important than results, you are in for a rocky road. If you don’t believe me, just watch Alain de Botton’s Tedtalk “Gentler philosophy of Success.”  Impact is intrinsically more satisfying, yet, society (and business) inherently embraces extrinsic results. If you generate the results, society rewards you, yet, it still sometimes feels like a hollowish satisfaction – that there must be something more or, well, better.

Look.

If I am honest, I am sure I played the role of a spiritless specialist at some points in my career. It was probably uncomfortable, but I did it. It’s quite possible I was within the generation navigating the change from “industrial and based on mass production, mass distribution, mass consumption, mass education,  mass media, mass recreation, mass entertainment, combine[d] with standardization, centralization, concentration, and synchronization and organizational bureaucracy” ( Toffler) to, well, a shift to the opposite and this puts certain demands on people to ‘do’ to bridge from an old way of doing things to a new way of doing things.

If I am honest, part of my career impact has been navigating this shift.

** Note: I am willing to place navigating this shift in the ‘impact’ category because I believe this was a positive shift for business, people and society, albeit, it’s a work in progress.

If I am honest, analyzing oneself on impact is hard. Its hard because we are hardwired, with some real reasons, to results. Therefore, some days, even if you write down how you made an impact each day, you will find yourself holding pencil above the paper not really sure what to write. Some days you will find no real victory, just the attempt.

And this is where results, impact, purpose and mattering all come crashing together. Results, impact, purpose and mattering are not typically short-term actions. What I mean by that is you do something, or somethings, ‘feel’ like you may have made some positive impact, but not see any direct correlation (ever) or correlation is ambiguous or correlation is days, months, years away. In the end impact is simply feeling like you have done something to make something, or someone, better in some way (but results can provide a short-term dopamine hit).

And maybe that is also where I land on Purpose (with a capital P). I believe Purpose is an outcome, not an objective. But I also recognize people like objectives. Maybe if everyone would center some Purpose objective on something simple like ‘better’ – better today than I was yesterday and ‘somehow making things better for someone’ – I believe you will attain the objective of Progress. And I would argue that if you attain Progress, I am fairly sure you will have positive impact which, in my pea like brain, should fulfill some Purpose.

In the end.

Results and impact. Parents, school, society, even peers, will bludgeon you with results judgment. From an early age we are taught this is how to not only assess yourself but assess yourself versus others. I am not going to suggest that, in a whole cloth way, this is wrong because at some point you do need to assess some truths with regard to your skills or even your own behavior. But we need to get a grip on how we view results. We need to understand that results are often a means to an end – the end being impact. Maybe we should ponder Viktor Frankl from Mans Search for Meaning:

“For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself.”

Results have consequences not just to ourselves, but to others. And maybe that is where I will end. I think we all know this; it just takes some awareness to become truly aware of it. We all know the world is bigger than “I”; it just takes some choice to do something about it.

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“Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour.

If at my convenience I might break them, what would be their worth?”

Charlotte Brontë

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“Ideology knows the answer before the question has been asked.

Principles are something different: a set of values that have to be adapted to circumstances but not compromised away.” 

George Packer

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“I do not think we have psychological and ethical and economic problems. We have human problems with psychological, ethical, and economic aspects.”

Mary Parker Follett

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I almost called this “70 million reasons to shelve Purpose in business.”

Yeah. As of today, I call for people to stop talking about business Purpose (or Purpose over Profit) and speak of Principles over Purpose.

I have about 70,000,000+ reasons to say this.

70,000,000+ people is about how many voted for Donald Trump.

70,000,000+ people, and their children, believe business should be led in this way. Or. Maybe said differently. They believe this type of leadership is effective within their world view of business.

it’s a zero-sum game world

playing by the rules is for losers

good people don’t win

do whatever it takes to win attitude

the ends justify the means

hyperbole (lying) is simply optimism in a pessimistic world

destruction, without creation, is a net positive

I am certainly not suggesting all 70,000,000 embrace everything that is Trump, however, fundamentally to vote for Trump you must accept some fundamental things about how to be successful in Life and in business. I will let sociologists deal with Life, I am worried about business.

“The 2016 explanations of Trump’s appeal were based around the theme that a vote for him was a scream of pain, a shout of hear this. OK – but the millions who voted for Trump in 2020 were not just making a protest vote. They were making a positive choice. Trump isn’t just a cipher for people’s frustrations – they actually like the guy. Worse – they think he’s a good president.”

Ian Leslie, The Ruffian: 11/7 edition

Which leads me to the title of this piece – principles over purpose – and the belief business is in, and of, society. I have always a dubious relationship with business Purpose and an even more uneasy relationship with the Purpose over Profit concept. While I applaud the higher calling of Purpose my concern with the business world, at the moment, is more about principles. Because in this time, and this place, people are beginning to believe the way to be successful, in business and in life, is by doing whatever it takes to win, be corrupt, lie, nepotism, lack of dignity and absence of integrity. If business believes they can avoid this trend by simply saying “him, not us”, they are delusional.

Let me touch on Purpose a bit because I envision someone saying to themselves “well, if the organization has a Purpose, that would probably resolve the ethical concerns.” 

No. It would not. In fact, many businesses claim a purpose and use that purpose to be shitbags. Ok. Shitbags that sell things and make money. So their purpose provides affirmation, and meaning, tied to results (and being a shitbag to do so). The people do have meaning, albeit a warped one, but a meaning nonetheless. In fact. I could argue this type of meaning is so easy for 99% of people to grasp, results/achievement/proof based, that, if asked, most people would be quite comfortable with this. It is a quasi-impersonal calculation of meaning which permits people to keep some larger questions about Life, and their true meaning, at arm’s length.

“Our age has found a substitute for God: the impersonal calculation. This new god has turned into an idol to whom all men may be sacrificed. A new concept of the sacred & unquestionable is arising: calculability, probability, factuality.”

Erich Fromm (1968)

Businesswise, this is Purpose without principles. This is winning by playing the game without rules. This is a problem.

I imagine I am suggesting to the Purpose folk you aren’t going to get anywhere with Purpose until you resolve the principle, or lack thereof, issue.

This permits me to circle back to ‘in, and of, Society.’ I do believe how a business embraces its intentions, its principled behavior, bleeds into how people embrace their own intentions outside of work. Work either offers an example to draw from or an excuse to act upon. Therefore, while some may want to use Purpose as a guiding compass, I believe business needs a map – a map of intentions.

Business intentions can get masked by visions or missions, both of the which can play valuable roles, but I believe a business should lay out its intentions.

An intent to act with integrity every day.

An intent to engage with community.

An intent to do what is right, not what just generates results.

An intent to be principled to create, not destroy.

Or, as Mary Parker Follett outlined:

1. 1. 1. We do not follow right, we create right;
      2. There is no private conscience;
      3. My duty is never to “others” but the whole.

I could argue this is a version of organizational morality <or value beyond profit> which can become a leadership cornerstone within an organization and a leadership cornerstone within societal behavior.

It is true what I am suggesting is a long road to hoe.  Morality and virtue are developed over time <via repeated decisions to choose what is right and to forego what is wrong> which typically means there is no quick fix to any organizational morality problems, nor to societal morality problems. That said. Business, if it elects to take on this responsibility, addresses this challenge because lots of smaller pieces can be redirected in the here and now by business without the consent of people (i.e., it is simply the system of the way business works). It can simply become the way business is done.

Within these intentions the people IN the organization then have a variety of paths they can choose to walk on – and clearly see where undesirable paths do not lie. These intentions don’t constrain, but rather construct. I hesitate to call these principles because, well, they seem simply like intentions. Call them what you may, but they are not Purpose.

“Morality is not the refraining from doing certain things – it is a constructive force”

Mary Parker Follett

In fact. What I am suggesting is a conscious decision to shelve Purpose and focus on the principles of ‘doing’, attitudes and, ultimately, behavior.

Yes.

Principles and principled actions are a tricky topic. Tricky in that while principles ‘are statements denoting fact or generality which are universally or widely considered to be true and fundamental’ they, in fact, have a great range of meaning. ‘Principles’ most often refers to fundamental, basic, propositions of some system or of conduct.

It would be much nicer if we actually referred to ‘principled behavior’ as an axiom. While an axiom is a derivative of ‘principle’ it is more tightly tied to ‘one agreed upon as the basis of truth … a truth so self-evident as to be indisputable’.

Principles, in theory, are an axiom. Unfortunately, in practice; they are more a theorem <a proposition>.

The distinction may feel like dancing on the head of a pin, however, within that distinction resides my belief it is time to set aside Purpose for principles and principled behavior. And, yes, I have 70,000,000+ reasons why.

Look. Here is one thing I know for sure. This is a Life truth.

I am not sure there is a worse feeling than looking back and wishing you had been more principled.

In a business world where sometimes, jobs are tough to get, and keep, setting aside principles to “win in a zero-sum game world’ seems like a fair trade.

Every day we are asked to compromise in some way. Sometimes it is simple ‘tradeoffs’ <do this or do that> and sometimes it is ‘a no good choice’ decisions <all choices are bad … which is least bad> and sometimes it is an actual ‘right versus wrong’ choice.

These are not difficult choices in our minds. These are difficult choices in reality.

You have a job to do, you have accepted responsibility to do that job and everyone around you is counting on you to do that job <and you do not get paid if you do not do your job>.

Yeah.

I am fairly sure some Purpose proponents are going to suggest “if you understand how your decisions/behavior impacts others you will act principally.” Well. I am not so sure. If I am working within the 70,000,000 bucket of people a shitload of them would simply say “if you help us win, no matter how, you have had a positive impact on us.” I will say this. principled behavior echoes through eternity (which includes homes, communities and society). It MAY serve a higher Purpose but at this time, in this place, I believe the business world just needs to focus on principles and principled behavior.

I could argue the #1 issue facing the business world right now isn’t Taylorism, short-termism or even profit, its how business plays the game – how they go about conducting business. In general, every business seems to treat every day like it is a zero-sum game which inevitably zeroes out principles (or at least minimizes them or gives some space to compromise them) and puts people on the slippery slope of ethical fading.

This kind of competitive attitude bleeds out of business and into society. It creates a sense that this is THE way to be successful and if you do not, someone else will.

Business was already teetering on the edge of maybe not complete corruption, but certainly corrupted principles. We look around and see unworthy ‘but-won’ and worthy ‘but-lost’ – inside the companies we work as well as society. In fact. I could argue 70,000,000+ voters are my proof they have seen this and have decided winning is more important than how you win.

That needs to be fixed.

And Purpose, in my mind, is not the answer. It isn’t the answer because the corrupted mindset will only corrupt the true purpose of Purpose. They will simply add it to their already long laundry list of objectives to be completed.

Principles, not Purpose.

That’s the battle at hand.

Just a warning as we enter into this important fray. Principles, while we like to think of them as solid cornerstones, are actually a reflection of a series of actions and choices over time. Work the system, consistently, and culture follows. It’s not like this time you will compromise and the next you will not. In other words. This will not be a one-time choice. It will be an ongoing calculation throughout the entire organization, a decision that must be revisited repeatedly, week after week as new demands and decisions unfold.

If we do this, that same attitude will occur outside the walls of the business.

And, well, society will benefit.

Let me end with maybe the most important thought. I am not sure there is a worse feeling than looking back and wishing you had been more principled. In the moment this can easily be forgotten, but at some point the past catches up with you and, well, your meaning will be defined by how you played the game, not whether you won all the games. People may not grasp this, but business certainly should. And in this time, and in this place, at least 70,000,000 people are willing to believe being principled is an obstacle to success. That is a problem. I just don’t believe Purpose solves the problem at hand.

Ponder.

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“We believe we are issuing executive orders, whilst most of the time we are actually engaged in hastily constructing plausible post rationalisations to explain decisions taken somewhere else, for reasons we don’t understand”

Rory Sutherland

“Never interrupt the enemy when he is making a mistake.”

–

Napoleon Bonaparte

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This is a follow up to “when you start to suck, stop.”

Why? Well. Because that one was focused on your suckedness and this is focused on someone else’s suckedness.

Simplistically.

If your enemy, or competition, is starting to suck,  don’t interrupt.

Once again, similar to knowing when to stop being difficult, it is difficult to stop from, well, stopping someone, even an enemy, when they are sucking. Most people see it as an opportunity to shine and cannot wait to show that they don’t suck.

So this is about patience … oh … and, actually, lack of ego.

Let me go to the ego thing first.

We all like to look & sound smart (or skilled at something). “Opportunity to shine” is how I put it earlier. As soon as someone starts sucking we inherently see the opportunity to show that we don’t suck. And we want to rush in as quickly as possible to make the ‘I don’t suck’ statement (or make the point that would confirm to everyone around us that we don’t).

It’s difficult, but, wait. Yep. Wait. Rest your ego for a second (or a minute or whatever).

Your ego will have its opportunity.

“But, but, but” you say. Why wait (i.e., “won’t I miss my opportunity”)?

Well, oftentimes, timing is key because if you don’t rush, and pick the time correctly you get an added plus (beyond the non-suckedness) because people will also judge your character.

Oh. And earn some respect.

Trust me.

Everyone else in the room knows the other person is sucking. They also know you are not pointing it out (or making the other person look foolish).

Look. Invariably your actions and words are compared to ‘your enemy.’ And it becomes a reflection of who you are as a person from a character perspective.

And people recognize that.  And they store it away for the future (because everyone knows they will suck at some point and they would prefer to be working/being with someone who is not going to leap at the opportunity to point it out).

So. That is the ego part.

Next. Patience.

Often we are in a rush to “do something” where patience is called for. Setting character to the side, I would like to remind people that mistakes are often like quicksand (corollary to sucking).

Not always but sometimes.

What that means is by having patience simply means let your enemy make as many and as much of a mistake as he/she is willing to make. Don’t interrupt the possible depth & breadth of the mistake. Let them get sucked into the quicksand as far as they are willing to go.

Patience permits you to assess the best opportunity:

do you just sit back and let your enemy drown in the quicksand (always a viable option)?

do you at some point, when the depth & breadth has been maximized (short of going under), you reach out and pull everyone out of the suckedness zone?

You win either way. But. You don’t have the win opportunity if you aren’t patient.

Because I opened with a Napoleon quote I would be remiss if I did not point out he was absolutely a master at permitting his enemy to suck for as long as it took to maximize his opportunity. I would also be remiss if I didn’t point out he won a shitload of battles.

So. Ponder. Never interrupt your enemy when he/she is making a mistake.

Yes. It is much much harder to do then you think.

Yes. It is much much easier to do the more practice you have.

Yes. It is an extremely effective way to get things done that you would like to get done.